Faculty Development Leave 2022 Awardees
The purpose of Faculty Development Leave is to enable faculty members to engage in study, research, writing, field observation, and similar projects to improve public higher education.
2022-2023 Faculty Development Leave Awardees
XiuJun (James) Li, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Li’s research focuses on the developments of innovative microfluidic devices and nanotechnology for biomedical applications, particularly in point-of-care analysis and disease diagnosis. His development leave involves understanding more about wearable biosensor technology and how he can combine that technology with his current research to develop advanced wearable microfluidic devices for biomedical application. His discovery will advance real-time monitoring of key biomarkers, e.g., glucose and controlled drug delivery upon demand.
Katherine S. Mortimer, Department of Teacher Education
Dr. Mortimer’s research pursues how to improve access to and engagement in computer science education among K-12 students, especially Latinx students, girls, and English learners, using culturally responsive and bilingual pedagogies through the context of computer science education. Her development leave will advance this area of her research and the opportunity to complete data collection, analyze, and produce publications on an NSF-sponsored project, Sol y Agua Research-Practice Partnership for Computer Science Education.
Iva M. Ivanova , Department of Psychology
Dr. Ivanova’s research advances the understanding of how people produce, comprehend, and communicate through language. Her research focuses on bilingual individuals. Her development leave will provide the opportunity to study at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in The Netherlands. Max Planck is the only institute in the world entirely dedicated to the Psychology of Language, hosting distinguished researchers from around the world. Dr. Ivanova will conduct a study on bilingual communicative language using the electroencephalogram (EEG) technique.
César A. Rossatto, Department of Teacher Education
Dr. Rossatto’s research involves critical pedagogy, critical multiculturalism, social justice, sociology of education, and educational sociocultural foundations. His development will unfold research related to Latin Americans in the borderland of U.S. and Mexico, particularly Brazilians. His research includes completing his book From Pedagogy of the Oppressed to Pedagogy of the Oppressor and Beyond, to explore the possibility of a world without oppressed and oppressors. His research will introduce educational models that are transformative in nature and inclusive, multicultural, and empowering to all people.
Natalia Mazzaro, Department of Languages and Linguistics
Dr. Mazzaro’s research investigates areas in the bilingual grammar that are more sensitive to cross-linguistic influence, and the specific agreement delays in Spanish bilinguals. Her project will focus on the impact of bilingualism and social attitudes on the development of the first language. Her development leave will also provide the opportunity to disseminate her findings and give formal talks to educators and parents that highlight the importance of literacy in the heritage language
Renato Aguilera, Department of Biological Sciences
Dr. Aguilera has extensive experience in immunology, cancer research, molecular and cell biology, and drug screening. His development leave will be utilized to develop new experiments in collaboration with other institutions that will focus on anti-myeloma drugs, and to craft competitive grant proposals and publications from preliminary data generated from his experiments.
Carina Heckert, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Dr. Heckert’s development leave will provide the opportunity to build on her research background in global health, particularly on a series of ethnographic research projects on maternal health that she been conducting over the last five years. Her research now spans recent crises including draconian responses to migrants that have led to family separations and deportations, a mass shooting, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Her project aims to compile her findings and write a book manuscript titled Birth in Times of Despair: Overlapping Crises and Maternal Health on the US-Mexico Border.
Chris E. Reyman , Department of Music
Dr. Reyman specializes in improvisation and composition in jazz and contemporary contexts. His development leave involves researching virtual reality applications, analyzing exemplary music compositions, composing thematic material at the piano to complete audio files for film and interactive media in collaboration with Mighty Coconut, a production company with success in the film and game industry.
Soheil Nazarian, Department of Civil Engineering
Dr. Nazarian has over 35 years of experience in geotechnical and transportation infrastructure. He is also director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center ASPIRE, which works to achieve a sustainable future for transportation through widespread electrification of roadway vehicles. During his development leave, Dr. Nazarian will work directly with other ASPIRE partner campuses to focus on the Power and Adoption aspects of ASPIRE and chart ways to engage 成人头条 students and faculty to collaborate and exchange scholarship.
Jeremy Slack, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Dr. Slack conducts research on border enforcement, undocumented migration, and drug trafficking on the U.S.-Mexico border. Dr. Slacks development leave will provide the opportunity to complete interviews and investigations that he is including in his book titled, The Rogue Border: The Plan to Deny Asylum at the U.S. Mexico Border and complete his research as a scholar in residence at the Instituto IberoAmericana in Puebla. His research expands our understanding of how asylum claim from undocumented migrants has changed immigration enforcement.